The reason I went with the Manafort thing is there seems to be a deliberate confusion of 3 separate investigatory threads-
Manafort, cracked like Capone.
The paperwork is bad, really bad. Manafort goes to jail for real and a long time, he will not emerge alive. Manafort knows this and chooses silence in the hope the Russians spare his family.
So, ultimately unproductive. Manafort dies off screen, only his documents remain and to the extent they don’t contain direct evidence linking Trump to crimes like money laundering useless except to pressure Manafort who is, alas, dead.
What Manafort knows that makes him valuable is the strategy and finances of the Trump Spy Ring and its Moscow Centre controllers. A big get that won’t be got.
Cohen, Tape Hoarder.
He can’t wait to sell out to the lowest bidder and very disappointed people are not returning his calls.
The problem is he’s giving too much. All those tapes, all the reciepts, all 16 sets of books, the neatly filed threat letters and SLAPP suits.
Now this pile of junk is his life and you might expect him to be a little more familiar with it so the SDNY (not Mueller) are taking a fair amount of time to make sure they understand what they already have.
At least a slam dunk based just on the paper and unlike Manafort his emergency signals are on as he sits on the side of the road ahead of the cruiser waiting for the report from the station.
We will learn everything about Trump’s daily assholery from his gate crashing celebrity aggression to his cheapness and petty thievery. Other than that maybe not much, though if it turns out Trump impregnated the other Playboy Model (not the one the Inquirer bought out, the one that was paid by ‘Elliot Broidy’ to have an abortion) maybe the Evangelicals might be disgusted enough by their “Baby Killer” leader fo it to make a difference.
I expect not though.
Why we started investigating Carter Page.
You know? Who cares? The guy was listed as a recruiting target by Russians. You’ll notice that objections to the ‘Steele Dossier’ now centers entirely on whether Donald Trump committed one deviant sexual act (and at that you have people who argue that mere recruitment, direction, financing, and witness is insufficient if you can not prove participation).
Carter doesn’t know anything about that anyway. He’s a clown, a red hatted distraction. In this case for an elaborate conspiracy theory (Vincent Foster will not die) where Obama and Hillary spied on Trump AND produced an elaborate and fantastical cover up for when their election theft succeeded and they had to diffuse the proud patriots who were a minority.
In a minority.
In a minority party.
But you represent a HUGE minority in the White Bigoted Party and are thus allowed to be arrogant aggressive bullies because…
We’re a MAJORITY country, a democracy.